What is freedom without love? What is love without forgiveness?

Što je sloboda bez ljubavi,a što je ljubav bez praštanja?

The Gospel (Vangelo), a drama of Pippo Delbono is a cultural project made in cooperation between the director Delbono, the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb and Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione from Modene, also in co-production with Theatre Vidy from Lausanne, Maison de la Culture from Amiens and a Belgian Theatre from Liège. The project is also made in cooperation with the Cinématique Suisse from Lausanne and Teatro Comunale from Bologne.

Pippo Delbono is an Italian director, writer and actor. He started his education in Italy and continued it in Denmark, where he got in touch with oriental theatre and started to study his principles through intensive work of voice and body. Also, he founded his own theatre group Compagnia Pippo Delbono and with it he realized many projects, like The Gospel. He was a winner of many awards and recognitions, like the Awards Ubu for the show Barboni, critics award for the show Guerra, Olimpic awards for innovation in theatre in shows Gente di Plastica and Urlo and many others.

As a young person, after watching this show I have to admit that I was left mildly surprised. Surprised because I could not avoid questioning myself. What is art? Does universal beauty exists in art? Where has art disappeared? Is art starting to be only a tool for someone to take out his judgment, hates and internal discontent? Inevitably, the question of love and freedom showed up.

The director P. Delbone, who is also the main actor of the drama, wants to present public in a very specific and particular way his own view of the world in which we live. The world in his view is devastated, locked with laws, while presenting itself to be free. A world without love, where people resent someone, a world which is afraid to look around and see what is really happening.

The Gospel starts with Delbone’s explanation to whom he dedicates this piece and in the same way it also finishes. The piece is dedicated to his mother, who did not stop to blame him because he moved away from Church and its laws, while she is faced with death. It is this relationship that finished sadly, which awakened his frustration. And not only frustration, but also judgment, sarcasm and hate directed towards the Church, its laws, its judgment of everything different from the Church and its tightness, as the director understands it. In the show actors and dancers are also taking part. They are acting and dancing following the director in his recitation and stressing out by their show how serious and complicated the problem in each particular scene is. During the recitation, in the backstage, pictures and short videos are broadcast. Dancing and singing himself, the director also influences the dynamic of the show. The drama elaborates on problems of love, death, wars and migration crises, which currently affect the whole world. Every scene of the show is accompanied with specific parts of the Bible, whose beauty and real meaning are hidden from the director and destroyed with comments full of judgment, sarcasm and hatred. He plays with topics, which influence human empathy, like love, freedom, wars and migration crises. Delbone wants to show his own view, and goes until proposing a contradictory version of the story.

Scenes about wars and migration crises are full of solidarity, but it looks as if the director forgot that solidarity means also some sort of understanding for someone else. If we watch and hear his statements, we can easily see that he does not have solidarity for the Church, which is not just an institution, but it is also made of people. Also the scenes about love avoid showing the real meaning of love. Love is here convicted to exteriority and to the glow. The same things that the director despises and blames the Church for are used to present his view of love.

Plenty of free seats in Croatian National Theatre confirmed my concern from the beginning. The drama leaves you breathless, but not in the sense of experiencing beauty. It leaves you breathless because of the experience of how art can be abused and how can man get lost in his freedom.

And the question from the beginning: What is freedom without love and what is love without forgiveness, did not come to me accidentally. Delbone throughout the whole show tries to emphasize the picture of love which should be free, which in his opinion is the most beautiful in the hippie era: a love without rules and limitations. In this whole story, he forgets that if we give to love freedom, we cannot take the forgiveness from her. If we have love without forgiveness, what is remaining? The Gospel drama calls us to live love, but not every part of it. If Delbone would consider every part of it and actually live that love, he would live the forgiveness too. One cannot be free and truly love without having to face forgiveness.